The Inter American Press Association said a court order barring a newspaper in Ecuador from reporting on a lawsuit against it brought by a government official was a "serious attack on freedom of the press," according to a statement from the group on Nov. 7.
Judicial proceedings against the Quito-based newspaper La Hora began after the publication of the article "$71 million in propaganda," which reported the amount the government had spent on official advertising in the first months of 2012, according to the website Ecuavisa. The information presented by the newspaper came from the Citizen Participation Corporation's Monitoring Center, which publishes a report every year, added the website.
The figures were disputed by the Undersecretary of Public Administration, Alejandro Pico, who sent a letter to the newspaper that La Hora published in its Oct. 13 edition, according to the publication. The government was not satisfied with the newspaper's response and responded by suing the it for allegedly violating its rights and not correcting the original article, according to Ecuavisa.
Afterwards, a judge banned La Hora from publishing anything about the proceedings while the case remains open, reported IAPA. Claudio Paolillo, president of the IAPA Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information said in a statement, "we are concerned that this absurd ruling silencing a media company could find its way into other cases."
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
